As Cities in Conflict goes on hiatus, I take a look back at the past fourteen months of publishing articles, film, photo-essays, mappings and infographics on the series, and comment on where urbanism is today: stuck between logics of saviourism and withdrawal.
Three years after the revolution, Tunisia is searching for a new urban identity.
The growing ubiquity of militarized borders has with it produced a subterranean network of cross-border tunnels. In tunnelling, global “urban burrowers” have begun to compose a new layer of multitude grounded in the struggles against global hegemony itself.
East Berlin's squatter movement erupted across the city after the fall of the wall in 1989. But what role did housing activists in the 1980s play in shaping an alternative vision for the contemporary city?
With the rise and repression of popular political protest on the streets of southern Europe, new monuments to resistance are emerging, memorialising novel moments of potential revolutionary history.
Twenty years of corporate colonisation of the Indian countryside has fuelled conflict, forced-urbanisation and the breakdown of the democratic ideal.
Watch: Through the eyes of residents, local activists and civil society members, 'City Forgotten' tells the story of Malegaon’s fall from what was once the 'Manchester of India', to a town blighted by communal violence and in serious decline. (15 mins)
A combination of violent rural and urban displacement have produced rings of poverty and exploitation on the outskirts of Dhaka, one of the world's fastest growing cities.
Rather than submit to the noxious dynamics of Spain’s colossal underground economy, the migrant workers of Mount Zion built an informal city in the backdrop of 'brand' Barcelona. On the 24th July the community was forcibly evicted and a humanitarian crisis was born.
Two years after the revolution, Tunisians have reclaimed public spaces in the city. But failing municipalities, a lack of law enforcement, and scant engagement with urban planners are a cause for concern.
In northern Uganda, local leaders are pushing for Gulu to receive city status. But does the municipality have what it takes to qualify?
State ambitions to build a 'global' Dakar alongside a proliferation of diaspora-financed luxury development, highlights the fraught nature of belonging in a city where everyday life is marked by migration, economic reform and inequality.
